“VoltaChem offers a brilliant environment for cooperation that boosts innovation”
04-02-2025
Eugene McKenna, Senior VP Hydrogen & Sustainable Technologies at Johnson Matthey, is a member of the Strategic Advisory Board at VoltaChem. We talked with him about the value of the VoltaChem program in the light of establishing a viable hydrogen economy. What opportunities and barriers does he see for electrolyzer development in the coming years? And what does he think of VoltaChem's role?
Based in Londen, UK, Johnson Matthey (JM) is a worldwide specialty chemicals and sustainable technologies company. It offers catalysts and related technologies for many branches of industry and is a main supplier of platinum-group metals and their products. Enabling the production of green, sustainable hydrogen and chemicals such as methanol by our customers are among the key application areas. For eight years, Eugene McKenna has been JMs Senior VP Hydrogen; Sustainable Technologies. JM got involved with VoltaChem about five years ago and McKenna has been a member of the Strategic Advisory Board for three years now.
Can you explain how the VoltaChem membership benefits JM’s hydrogen activities?
At Johnson Matthey, we have a strong focus on technology for green hydrogen production. In our view one of the most promising approaches is using electrolyzers and power those using renewable electricity. We want to contribute to this with our expertise in chemistry and catalysis. In particular in PEM electrolyzers we can help improving the catalyst coated membrane, which will be a big part of making electrolyzers more efficient and driving down cost.
In our view, electrolyzer development can be accelerated by companies focusing on their core competencies then collaborating. What VoltaChem does very well is that it provides a safe space for this. Along with expert facilities, knowledgeable people and a supportive legal framework, VoltaChem has created a brilliant environment for cooperation that boosts innovation.
I am very positive about how VoltaChem manages to draw international companies together to develop sustainable technologies and their supply chains in an atmosphere of open innovation. When you are able to innovate across the various parts of those value chains, across boundaries, you can arrive at the best possible system. VoltaChem has been really helpful in catalyzing that process from early on. And I think it will be very important to continue doing that.
Can you sketch what the future of electrolyzers will look like?
We are only on the brink of its technological development. And we can clearly see a route of improvements that will lower cost and also have the potential to double the energy density. Within a decade, we should be able to bring in 2 or 3 times as much electricity into the same box and get out 2 or 3 times as much hydrogen. And all of that comes with capital savings and the footprint of what you need to build a plant.
Since PEM electrolyzers are able to ramp up and down their capacity in tandem with the generated power, they really connect well with sources of renewable electricity, adding the opportunity to balance the grid. This requires tens of gigawatts of installed capacity but I think we will be able to pull that off. Some time ago I was in Washington in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. There you can see the Kitty Hawk of the Wright Brothers that in 1903 started the aerospace era. There’s also the Apollo 11 command module that was used in 1969 to bring the first astronauts to the moon. There’s just over half a century between these two aircrafts, which brought us from the bicycle technology of the Wright brothers to advanced metallurgy and many other technologies that enabled the Apollo program. I think this is something that we see in electrolysis as well. Just five years ago, production of early generation catalyst coated membranes involved hand painting the catalyst onto the membrane, and screwing together 400 cells in an electrolyzer and connecting all of them. If you look at the same manufacturers now, production has to a great extent been automated.
Back in the days of the aircraft, the rule of thumb was that the second plane you made was 20% cheaper than the first, and comparable reductions were realized with every doubling of the number of planes. That number of 20% is of course not the same in all industries but I’m sure we will see things develop along the same line in electrolysis.
What do you think will be crucial for making that happen?
Well, that is all about the system as a whole. It is not just about electrolyzers. You've got to be able to transport hydrogen and to store it. And first of all, there has to be a strong demand for green hydrogen. Perhaps we haven't grasped the degree of change that's required in order to make this all happen.
In Europe we are now very much focusing on making sure hydrogen is as green as can be. That is stopping us from reducing hydrogen prices and creating a market. I’d like to make a comparison with China, where they are less stringent, at least for now. There, abundant availability of hydrogen is driving down the cost of the application in fuel cells or in chemistry. At the same time, they also invest in generating green hydrogen. What you will see is that at some stage in the future, as cost at both ends of the value chain are being reduced, these will become joined up and the sustainable option will become competitive.
Another thing is that expected cost reductions might tempt governments and industries to wait until the price comes down. But of course, the mechanism by which electrolyzers get cheaper is not time. The mechanism is by manufacturing at scale and making more and more of them and learning from it. This will only happen if we are prepared to buy the generations of electrolyzers that are not yet perfect. That has been done with wind power, for instance, stimulated by guaranteed electricity prices. The outlook on payback kept people investing. We need the same thing for electrolyzers and support buyers of current generations of electrolyzers with a hydrogen price that will ensure a return on their investment.
I think that when regulations are appropriately adjusted, we will see a rapid scaling up. We can easily supply gigawatts of capacity at today's level of technology in a in a very short space of time. And I think once we have a clear demand signal, investments will follow.
What does this mean for VoltaChem?
Well, VoltaChem already focuses on system aspects, modelling electricity systems, modelling hydrogen economics. It would be great to apply these skills for designing regulatory systems in order to facilitate the market really taking off. But establishing a future hydrogen economy will still need a lot of technology development. So VoltaChem should definitively maintain its role there, stimulating and facilitating interaction between different companies, where the innovation is in the ‘white spaces’ between the areas of technology expertise of individual companies.
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